This is a collection of assorted quotations from mostly famous people, past and present, on the subject of faith – the righteousness of faith. I am adding to the collection over time, placing the most recent quotation at the top, with the rest sorted in alphabetical order by the last name of the person being quoted.
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Noted Historian Measures the Historical Significance of Jesus
As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by His effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet.
Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968), American historian of China, Japan, and the worldwide expansion of Christianity. He served as president of the American Historical Association, and, in addition to other honors, was awarded honorary doctorates from seventeen universities in five countries. (quote source)
Why then is Jesus not taught in world history classes? Irrespective of religious considerations, wouldn’t this historian’s assessment, if true, make Jesus the most historical man ever? And, if not true, wouldn’t it make Latourette a terrible historian?
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The Faith of a Farmer
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
Elizabeth York Case (1837-1909)
And waits to see it push away the clod –
He trusts in God.
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Did Jesus’ Apostles Conspire to Lie about His Resurrection?
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
Charles (Chuck) Colson (1931-2012) – Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1970
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C.S. Lewis on Chronological Snobbery
One of the often-heard objections to faith in Christ is that it is old fashioned or outmoded, a relic of the distant past and therefore easily discarded. After all, what could a two-thousand-year-old faith have to say to us in the twenty-first century? This was one of the obstacles that C.S. Lewis had to overcome in order to come to faith in Christ. He dubs the problem as one of “chronological snobbery.” His friend Owen Barfield often argued with him on this issue. Lewis’s question was: How could this ancient religion be relevant to my present setting? Lewis defines this chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.” Lewis eventually came to understand the need to ask further questions such as: Why did this idea go out of date? Was it ever refuted? If so, by whom, where, and how conclusively? In other words, you need to determine if an old idea is false before you reject it; we would not want to say that everything believed in an ancient culture was false. Which things are false—and why—and which things remain true?
Art Lindsley, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, C.S. Lewis Institute, underlining added
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Non-Christian Historical Reference to Early Christianity
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to do some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. –
from the letter of Pliny the Younger (Roman governor of Bithynia, in the north of Asia Minor from 111-113 AD) to the Roman emperor Trajan, approximately 111 AD.
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“You don’t make Jesus Lord – He’s already Lord.” – Voddie Baucham
The Duty of a Man 